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Saturday, 29 June 2013

Punctuation..? A review

Definition

Macmillan defines it
as “the use of marks such as full stops or commas in order to write in a clear
style”.

Oxford's definition is slightly
wordier: “the marks, such as full stop,
comma, and brackets, used in writing to separate sentences and their elements
and to clarify meaning”.

Edgar
Allan Poe, the 19th century American poet and writer has been quoted
as saying “The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to
be misunderstood.... For the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an
axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid.”
(Source: Dictionary.com)

Yet,
punctuation has caused endless debates over the years, and one of the main
culprits is the apostrophe.

Do
you know that there is even an International Apostrophe Day (18th
Aug)?

So,
when I was asked to review a little book on punctuation, it didn't take much to convince me.

Simply
titled, “Punctuation..?”, it is written by Thomas Bohm, who also did the
childlike illustrations, adding a touch of wit to the otherwise dryish but
clear explanations. The book is available in Central Books, Waterstones and Amazon.

“Punctuation..?” seeks to explain the functions and correct uses of 21 of the most used
punctuation marks in alphabetical order, starting from the controversial
apostrophe and ends with one of the most confusing for a lot of people – the
semicolon.

Why
does the apostrophe cause so much distress? Bohm says that the most common use
of an apostrophe is to indicate possession although he didn't cite his source
for such a conclusion. He's probably right but I can't help but think that it
might be a close call with its use to show omission, eg can't, doesn't, etc.

What
is more important, however, is Bohm's failure to mention what happens when the
name of the person ends with an s, such as Dickens or Frances, or when talking
about a singular noun which ends in s, eg class.

On
the other hand, it is interesting that Bohm should mention “the apostrophe
has largely vanished from company names”. Waterstones, for example, removed
their apostrophe as recent as 2012!

Brackets

Bohm mentions the
round, curly and square brackets. Apparently, there are rules attached to them.
Most of us, me included, use only the round brackets, but I sometimes use a
different one if I need brackets within brackets and I also use the square
brackets to denote if a verb is transitive or intransitive, or if a noun is
countable or uncountable, as in the dictionaries. The curly
brackets are supposedly for showing “a series of equal choices” whatever that
means and square brackets are for showing a different tone or to clarify
information.

The rest...

Aside from the use
of brackets, Bohm insists that the dash, the em dash and hyphen are all
different. There is also something called interpunct, which is a small dot
vertically centred between words. I don't know where to find this on my keyboard.

Bohm also states
that the double quotation marks are reserved for quotes within quotes and the
single are now mainly used.

I'm not too sure
about this because I still see double quotes everywhere.

Conclusion

As you notice, there are bits of interesting information scattered about in this booklet; some, you may know while others may come as a surprise. Rules about the
usage of punctuation are readily available on the Net, but if you are one of
those who prefer a hard copy at hand, I can heartily recommend this book. It's
handy and small (35 pages) and does well what it sets out to do. I can't help but think, however, that an e-book version would serve as a better vehicle.

2 comments:

I knew almost all that stuff before but when I read about "international Day of Apostrophe" it blew my mind. BTW: great article - I found it useful and for sure I'll steal some points to use during classes.